All the Kings' Fools: Disability and the Tudors

For centuries, disabled people and their history have been hidden in plain sight.

Before the advent of modern medicine, any impairment, disease or frailty was often a matter of life and death. The treatment of disabled people reveals a great deal about periods throughout history and contemporary wider societies.

From the nobility to the lowest of society (including William Somer, Henry VIII's fool at court), Phillipa Vincent-Connolly casts a light on the lives of disabled people in Tudor England and guides us through the social, religious, cultural, and ruling classes’ response to disability as it was then perceived.